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The General Council of the World Trade Organization on 17 December agreed to extend a deadline for accepting an amendment to the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement by two years.

The amendment would make permanent a temporary “waiver” that is already in effect. The text of this waiver, agreed to 30 August 2003, “removes limitations on exports under compulsory licence to countries that cannot manufacture the pharmaceuticals themselves,” according to the WTO website. The amendment to TRIPS was approved by WTO members in December 2005 but must be adopted at the national level to take effect.

The waiver has only been used once (IPW, IP Burble, 17 September 2009), and the related amendment has been adopted by 26 members of the WTO, including the 27-member European Communities. Two-thirds of the 153-member body must accept the amendment before the waiver is made permanent; the new deadline for them to do so is 31 December 2011.

The recommendation to extend the deadline was made at a 27 October meeting of the TRIPS Council, at which point governments also decided to have an informal meeting on ways to improve the waiver’s efficacy (IPW, WTO/TRIPS, 30 October 2009).